At pizza point

Whether you call it the wedge, ploeg, chasse neige or Pflug, everybody that took ski lessons remembers their first moves on the slopes …

No matter where you learned to ski, there is a specific word for the way your teacher taught you. Although the denominator varies, the methodology is – more or less – the same everywhere. So, chances are when you learned to ski as an adult, you do not really have fun memories of these first couple of days on the slopes. You might even have wondered: can’t we just skip this ‘kids thing’ and go to real skiing at once? What most people do not know is that ski instruction is very well organised in the Alpine countries. Some think you can just become a ski instructor if you ski quite well. Well, the opposite is true. All mountain countries have a fully worked out roadmap on how to become a certified ski instructor, or less even, simply learn to ski decently.

Within this roadmap, there is a very detailed step-by-step technical instruction plan that takes beginners from the famous pizza point all the way to very advanced racing techniques. Even on such a scale that world-class ski racers will spend several days in the summer period skiing in … a pizza point. They focus on doing all kinds of basic drills to fix a small detail that could give them an advantage at high speed. Unfortunately, less patient skiers assume skiing is just something you start doing and will manage, after a perhaps painful period of trial and error, without taking any lessons to master the basics. Admittedly, after a few weeks in the mountains they might approach a level of comprehension that will navigate them from the top of the mountain back to the valley. However, it is safe to say that this will not lead to any decent results and might cause harm along the way.

In the early days of public cloud, cloud providers were selling exactly this ‘trial and error’ approach. No need to start with the basics, just do some proof of concepts and start using them in production.

The motivation behind this was a pure financial catch- 22. Setting up a public cloud is a huge investment. But the return on investment only comes in when customers start to consume. If organisations would have started with the proper basics, it would have taken more time before the real consumption started and as such, before the money started to come in.

To make it worse, credit card consumption was introduced right from the start. You do not need to have an enterprise- level licensing model to start doing cloud computing. You actually do not need to go see your IT department to get started or see results. Every single business division could use a simple credit card transaction and work out their first steps in the cloud.

It goes without saying that this is not a sustainable approach. The problem with all of this is exactly the same problem as racing down the hill without proper training: it is most likely dangerous (for instance from an IT security point of view) and it will never lead to anything robust, reliable or scalable. You simply manage to start but will hit speed bumps very soon.

We see that this scenario happened in some part of the enterprise market. Let’s look further than stating the obvious and propose some possible solutions to overcome this issue and avoid this avoid this from happening again in the future as cloud technology continues to evolve and innovate?

One of the first recommendations is not a technical action: transform your traditional IT setup into a service-oriented setup. In a services setup, the IT organisation becomes a service centre that offers business value, rather than a cost centre that potentially slows down innovation. Getting there requires a lot of different work streams, both technical and non-technical.

Secondly, challenge your landing zone design. An enterprise- scale landing zone is the technical foundation of your cloud or hybrid platform. Since cloud technology evolves at a very rapid speed, it makes sense to do a regular, programmatic landing zone evaluation, using concepts like a well- architected framework. A structured approach towards these checkpoints gets you on top of the foundation. It eases the conversation with the business departments that want to innovate. Besides that, it helps to have a clear view on the technical roadmap.

Next, go beyond the landing zone. The IT division responsible for the cloud platform is often ‘the former’ IT infrastructure team. The challenge of that situation is that in a cloud world, the boundaries between infrastructure and application teams are blurred. It is actually one of the advantages that allows more agile and efficient IT adoption. However, there is one condition: you need to perfectly orchestrate it. A new hybrid operating model with clear agreements on accountabilities is an absolute necessity. The outcome of such a modelling exercise is quite often surprising.

In addition, you continuously need to innovate with managed proof of concepts. We might have misled you in the thesis of this blog, but do not misunderstand us: doing proof of concepts is a good thing. Doing them unmanaged is where the problem lies. When there is a solid foundation, the new service IT organisation should foster and drive innovation. And definitely not slow it down. When there is a good combination of a technical sound platform and a pragmatic hybrid operating model, we see that innovation booms.

Last, but not least, have a look at the intake process. A key part of that hybrid operating model is a smooth, efficient intake process for business demand. It is tempting to set up a robust, yet bureaucratic, process to turn business demands into projects or programs. What is needed is the exact opposite: an agile, smooth process. The business needs to see the value of involving IT early on. To do this, the question you need to ask is: “What is the incentive for the business to come and talk early to IT, rather than just doing the shadow IT option?”.

Finally, nothing is ever going to work on an enterprise scale without monitoring and remediation. The larger the company, the more likely innovation is going to happen without IT involvement. On various levels, some sort of monitoring needs to be put in place. Think of the FinOps capability of anomaly detection to monitor the usage of expensive components.

In conclusion, the analogy between learning to ski and adopting cloud technology offers valuable insights into the importance of laying a solid foundation.

Just as every skier starts with the fundamental pizza point, businesses venturing into the cloud should begin with a well-structured approach.

The misconception that skiing, or in this case, cloud computing, can be mastered without proper guidance is debunked. Just as becoming a skilled skier requires a systematic roadmap, becoming proficient in cloud technology demands a carefully planned journey. It is not just about knowing how to ski or deploy cloud services, but about understanding the intricacies and building a solid foundation. Just as trying advanced skiing techniques without mastering the basics can be dangerous, embracing cloud technology without proper governance poses security risks and compromises the robustness, reliability, and scalability of the infrastructure.

To navigate the evolving landscape of cloud technology, we recommend transforming traditional IT into a service-oriented setup, regularly evaluating, and adapting the technical foundation, and establishing a hybrid operating model that fosters agility. Managed proof of concepts is a key lever for driving innovation within the framework of a solid foundation and a pragmatic operating model.

We recommend that businesses approach cloud adoption with the same diligence and structured progression as learning to ski, ensuring a safe, efficient, and successful journey into the world of cloud technology.

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